To meddle or not

International crises have a knack of breaking out in places that are thought to be of marginal concern. The ongoing crisis in Libya is no exception. In the past few years, Libya was seen as shedding its pariah status and entering the mainstream of international politics. Both George W. Bush and Tony Blair cited Libya as a success story: a “rogue” state that had come in from the cold. A careful balance of threats and inducements had apparently convinced Col. Muammar Gaddafi to forsake both terrorism and the pursuit of nuclear weapons.

When India took its place in the United Nations Security Council earlier this year, Libya was not high on the list of potential hot-spots. So far, the Indian government has managed to improvise a response. It has gone along with the imposition of sanctions, agreed to refer the issue to the International Criminal Court (ICC), while ensuring that its own opposition to the ICC remains unimpaired. But the ongoing crisis could yet force New Delhi to clarify its stance on forceful intervention against the Gaddafi regime.
For a start, we need to move beyond thinking on the basis of first principals. India’s position on external intervention has been far from consistent. To be sure, we have repeatedly avowed non-intervention in internal affairs of states. But in practice we have supported interventions, both rhetorically and practically. Think of our stance on apartheid in South Africa from the late 1940s onwards, the civil war in Congo in the early 1960s, East Pakistan in 1971, Cambodia and Uganda in 1978, and of course in Sri Lanka. Consistency may not be a virtue in international relations, but clarity is. And we need to start thinking about functional criteria that will govern our stance on interventions. Unless we do so, we may not be able to effectively intervene in international debates.
In thinking through these issues, it may be useful to review some earlier attempts to evolve criteria for the use of force in grey-area conflicts. In 1984, the then American defence secretary, Caspar Weinberger, offered a set of tests for intervention. Weinberger’s tests were designed for an America that was not only scarred by the experience of Vietnam but also by the botched intervention in Lebanon in 1983, which resulted in the death of 241 marines in a terrorist attack. Nevertheless, the criteria he suggested were interesting. Forces should be committed to combat only if vital interests were at stake; troops should be used wholeheartedly and with the intent of winning; there should be clearly defined political and military objectives; the relationship between these objectives and the forces committed must constantly be assessed; the intervention must be backed by domestic public opinion; and the use of force must be the last resort. Weinberger’s six criteria were clearly intended to restrict American military involvement in the internal affairs of other countries. Weinberger’s tests were actually evolved by his military secretary, Colin Powell. As Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mr Powell would use these arguments to dissuade the Clinton administration from intervening in the Balkans in the 1990s.
The United States’ reluctance to intervene in the Balkans led to another attempt at defining criteria for interventions. The context, of course, was the need to prevent ethnic cleansing and other humanitarian crises. At the height of the Kosovo crisis of 1999, a set of five tests was advanced by Mr Blair in a speech in Chicago. Interestingly, Mr Blair’s criteria were explicitly modelled on those of Weinberger. Was the case for humanitarian intervention clear-cut? Were all diplomatic options exhausted? Were there military options that could be sensibly and prudently undertaken? Are we prepared for the long haul? Were national interests involved? Mr Blair’s own practice defied many of these principles; but it remains an interesting attempt at balancing the strategic, prudential and normative factors surrounding armed interventions.
Neither of these sets of criteria can entirely guide India’s policy. But they do underline some key issues that should be addressed. In particular, New Delhi must come to grips with the core strategic requirement: the availability of practicable military options and their links to desired political outcomes. Applied to the current crisis in Libya, this throws up two major questions. First, does the international community have a clear view of the nature of the crisis and desired outcomes? That Col. Gaddafi’s regime has lost its legitimacy is clear. But that does not exhaust the range of issues that need to be addressed. For instance, much is made of the tribal politics of Libya. But we do not yet fully understand either the circuits of power and patronage in the country, or the quality of the forces opposing the regime.
Second, are practicable military options available? It is evident that there is little appetite for dispatching ground forces. In a speech at West Point two weeks ago, the US secretary of defence, Robert Gates, pointedly observed: “Any future defence secretary who advises the President to again send a big American land Army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined’, as General MacArthur so delicately put it”. Mr Gates’ remarkable candour underlines both the limits of American power and the extent of institutional resistance within the US military to undertaking ground interventions.
It is not surprising, therefore, that there is so much talk of using air power or special forces. But India should not be taken in by glib assertions. As a leading strategic analyst once put it, Western powers see modern air power as akin to modern courtship: it promises gratification without commitment. The experience of the past two decades should warn against facile assumptions about no-fly zones or safe havens. They have neither been very effective nor particularly easy to enforce. New Delhi must carefully examine international proposals for their military viability as much as their political soundness. Only then can we shape the nature of international consensus on such thorny questions.

Srinath Raghavan, senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi